I already picked the best hamburger in the world. It’s in the café at Hinrichsen’s Farm Distillery. So this is the best sandwich in the world, and in Tasmania, it’s known as a Toasty. Back in Texas, we’d call it a Grilled Cheese with Everything.
But in the Post Office Café, it’s called a Toasty. Lucy, the distillery manager at Clyde Mill Distillery, just outside the little Central Tasmanian Highland town of Bothwell, took me there for lunch on a Wednesday. I’d been filming at the distillery all morning and was ready for lunch. She goes there often, and now I see why.
There was quite a menu of items that could go on a Toasty. She ordered first, and I figured whatever she ordered would be good, so I said, “Make it two.”
She was right, and I was right to follow her lead. The Toasty was huge. Two grand slices of fresh sourdough bread (it’s a bakery that makes its own desserts and bread daily, as well as being a functional post office).
The bread was a foot wide, and the two halves were stacked on top of each other. Crispy on the outside, perfectly grilled, and sitting on a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. My sandwich had two cheeses, thinly sliced smoked ham, tomato, spinach, onions and homemade pickled zucchini. I chose the cowardly way to eat it, using a knife and fork.
How much flavor can one pack into a sandwich? Usually, not nearly this much.
Add in a hot cappuccino and a warm fire in the potbelly woodburning stove, and it was exactly right. Tasmania can get cold, and places like this warm one’s soul. It was obviously the center of activity in Bothwell, a quiet little town of around 400 Tasmanians. The streets are quiet, and you’re just as likely to see a tractor going down a street as a car. There are farms all around the town. Clyde Mill is a working farm as well as a 200-year-old flour mill, driven by water from the Clyde River. They don’t grind flour there anymore, but they do make some exceptional whisky and serve great food in the restaurant, as well as serving up beautiful views of the surrounding hills.
It’s a pretty idyllic place and only an hour north of Hobart, and very worth the scenic drive up. It’s a great place to be a platypus as well, I’d assume. Whatever we end up naming the platypus in the pond next to the distillery, I’d assume he or she is living a great platypus life.
However, one defines that.
Beautiful, clean water to splash in. No alligators to avoid. Plenty to eat, whatever a platypus eats. Tourists from all over the world to entertain. Even a waterfall to run up and down in a platypus kind of way.
But back to that Toasty.
I could only eat half, and I’ll wait for dinner tonight. I’ve spent the day at the distillery, this morning driving around the surrounding farm hills with spectacular views and lots of frolicking sheep and banks of fog rolling around aimlessly. Then I came back to the distillery and caught the head chef, making gnocchi with a lamb roast ragu that had been flavoring the air in the café all morning. That’ll be lunch, and the other half of the Toasty will be dinner tonight.
The Clyde Mill distillery serves up great whisky, great food, and great views. They serve their own lamb from the surrounding hills and grow their own barley.
Farm to table AND glass.
But if you don’t get to eat here, get to the post office.
Chris and Sally will make you a delicious hot cappuccino and the best Toasty on the planet. Sit by the fire and warm your soul, no matter how cold it is outside.
And send a package to someone you love.
It’s not often you can do both in the same place.
The Bothwell Post Office is there for you. Then go over to Clyde Mill and say hi to the platypus and have a dram of great Tasmanian whisky. I’m pretty sure the gnocchi will be gone by the time you get there, but you’ll be full after the Toasty anyway.
